Gravity?
That’s only a theory. 
Nope it’s the law. Not subject to repeal anytime soon.
Old Gage had himself a fine list of Computer Engineers and Sanitation Engineers to brag about.
I don’t think 9/11 CT folks are nearly as smart as goldfish.
As others have noted, it was hit not only with big freaking chunks of other buildings, but with FLAMING big freaking chunks of other buildings. Not only did getting hit by those big chunks of other buildings weaken it’s structural integrity but the fires started went on for something like 8 hour IIRC. Un-fought and totally out of control. The only real mystery here is why 9/11 Truthers trot this out as if it’s their holy grail, because to anyone who has actually looked into this it’s not really very mysterious at all that it collapsed. Maybe it would make more sense to you if you could see a diagram of the buildings and the attack and where WTC 7 was in relation to everything going on around it.
Well, you seem to be under the impression that it was the planes that downed WTC 1 & 2. Indirectely it was, of course, but the actual cause of the collapse was the planes hitting the buildings at high speed and stripping off the protective fire retarding coating from the main support members (those not destroyed by the planes flying in initially). In addition to this, the fire suppression system was either completely or partially rendered inoperative. Which meant that fires started would have direct access to the structural steel AND that those fires would rage out of control unless fire fighters could get to the area…something that was impossible as well (note here…MANY died trying, and trying to rescue people trapped by the raging fires). Which brings us to those planes full of jet fuel and those offices, without fire suppression systems full of flammable stuff. That combination is actually what brought down WTC 1 & 2 down. WTC 7, of course, was brought down due to the collapse of WTC 1 (which, contrary to what some CTers believe did not ‘fall in it’s own foot print’). When it collapsed it rained down literally tons of flaming debris onto WTC 7, gouging out a huge chunk of the buildings and setting it on fire. WTC 7, since it had data centers and backup disaster recovery sites in the building also had several very large caches of diesel for the various generators, which also caught on fire. These fires raged completely out of control for many, many hours, since other things were kind of keeping the fire fighters busy during this period. The fire suppression system, as in WTC 1 & 2 was also rendered inoperative, which meant that there was zero mitigation happening to contain the fire. It took longer to collapse basically because of where the fires were and the fact that the same levels of stripping of the fire protection on the structural members wasn’t done as with the other two towers.
So, now that I’ve gone through this (all from memory since, gods help us, we’ve done this silly fucking dance over and over for literally years here), what do you have as a retort? Feel free to rebut any of this with actual facts instead of homilies about the nature of belief and similar horseshit. Thanks in advance.
You are referring, I believe, to the inexorable pull to join the master race of Lizard Kings that rule the underworld.
Please stop insulting the poor goldfish… 
OK, 17,000? Really? Where exactly did you get that number? Because as of September, 2013 Gage had barely 2,000 signatures and that had taken him years to get. Now all of a sudden he’s more than octupled his signers?
Yeah, no. I’m think its the same pack of idiots with Philosophy and Religion degrees that he tries to avoid talking about. (Note in that article I linked to he talks about the degrees in terms of PHDs and MS, etc but not what they are actually in)
This is a copy cat tactic typical of pseudo-scientists, I have seen many “there is no consensus” petitions and surveys before* coming from scientific racists, deniers of tobacco causing disease, climate change contrarians, creationists against evolution, etc.
- That include researchers that are not really involved in the subject so as to make the number of contrarians to be artificially inflated.
I hesitate to even ask but…
Why are CTs so into WTC7? What does WTC7 have to do with anything? Is there supposed to be some reason the govt would plant explosives in this non-emblematic office building along with the Twin Towers (and whatever is supposed to have “really” happened at the Pentagon?). This leaves aside the obvious, repeated point that it makes no sense to ninja explosives into the WTC and then crash planes into them anyway… Ugh, how is it possible not to see the incoherence?
What is the point of CTs involving WTC7?
It’s obvious. If planes had just crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania, bringing down the Twin Towers and killing scores more at the other sites, it wouldn’t have mobilized enough of a national will to invade Afghanistan and Iraq. It took the additional collapse of WTC7 to really put the public anger over the top.
Of course! I see it now! The scales have fallen from my eyes!
Because the Jewish guy told the firefighters to “pull it”, meaning to demolish the evidence right then and there. Because he’s Jewish and presumably had something to gain. That’s where most of these CTs end up going. The Jews did it because Jews.
Ah yes the old IJC angle. Which Jewish guy here?
I don’t go with any of the conspiracy stuff but it’s more than a little problematic that the US gov had an enormous secret project built out in some semi-desert, had it there for a decade or so, gathering information and eavesdropping on seemingly half the western world, including national leaders, and no on said a damn thing.
Larry Silverstein. I bet he’d give anything to be able to go back in time and say “get your firefighters out of there before that building falls on their heads!”. Instead, he said “pull it” and got himself hounded by CTers from then until the end of time.
Perhaps this was his plan all along. I see it all now; at a real terrorist attack you plant just enough clues to provoke conspiracy theories. It’s a false false-flag operation, if you will. This occupies the time and attention of the conspiracy theorists, while simultaneously discrediting them so they will not be believed later should they uncover some actual conspiracy.
It’s really quite brilliant.
Okay, now you’re new to the forum. Welcome to SDMB! Enjoy your stay.
(and this time I actually did check the join date!)
Oh wow, I can’t remember the last time I heard that one brought up. I totally forgot about it. After all, it’s not like every single time 9/11 comes up, some conspiracy theorist brings up building 7 in a weak attempt to claim controlled demolition.
Have you tried, I dunno, looking for an explanation? Like, when I google “building 7 explanation”, the very first result is this:
http://www.debunking911.com/pull.htm
That’s literally the first result, and it goes into far more detail than any half-baked claim of “controlled demolition” goes. A half-baked claim that has absolutely zero standing in the peer-reviewed literature, mind you. You brought up AE911Truth… Well I emailed them, asking if they knew of any peer-reviewed papers in relevant journals discussing the events of 9/11 by their “2000 scientists”, and got this:
[spoiler]Dear <me>:
Thank you for contacting us. You point to one mystery of 9/11. Even though the technical absurdity of the mythical attribution of the twin towers’ destruction to Osama bin Laden’s fanatical hijackers can be understood and sustained by people with an average intelligence and no formal technical education, major scientific and technical organizations have surprisingly shown very little concern over this grand obfuscation. Their publications on this matter have been few and have treated the myth as an absolute truth. They have never even bothered or claimed to reconcile it with what is known of the construction and condition of the twin towers, what is known of the aircraft that allegedly destroyed them, the obvious macroscopic attributes
of their destruction, and the laws of physics. In particular, the latest official technical report on this matter, by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology, claims to credibly explain only why the structural failure started suddenly and is a transparent cover-up, as summarized in our slide show starting here
.
Serious 9/11 researchers have experienced great difficulties getting their work accepted for publication by mainstream technical journals. Several technical papers have been published that are technically compatible with the actual mode of destruction of the twin towers, but always watered down in their criticism of the myth. The nanothermite paper you allude to is a prime example of this pattern, as it deals with an aspect of the controlled demolition that is important but rather abstract and therefore hard to base an outreach on. Ironically, its peer review included the unusual step of including one peer whom the authors did not know and therefore could not contact directly. The authors found that dealing with this anonymous peer delayed the publication by a few months.
Another technical paper compatible with the actual mode of destruction of the twin towers bears the humiliating title of “14 Points of Agreement” with the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s analysis. It reads like a praise for the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s work, sparsely peppered with subdued suggestions for improvement that only allude to its fraudulent essence.
Incidentally, this is only one aspect of the mainstream scientific and technical organizations’ astonishing blind spot over the self-evident criminal controlled demolition of the twin towers, not to mention Building 7’s. Professional associations of civil engineers and faculties of civil engineering, anywhere in the world, could have effortlessly produced our summary diagram
or similar materials weeks after 9/11, but have not done so. Efforts to ask them to stop ignoring the major attributes of the twin towers’ destruction have generally been ignored. The very few exceptions confirm the rule.
Best Regards,
Dan Noël
volunteer, Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth
Thank you for the response, Dan. I guess the problem is that I’m really not impressed. It seems to me like what you’re alluding to is a vast number of engineering and architectural journals that are “in on the conspiracy”. I mean, I haven’t seen the papers you and your associates at AE9/11 have tried to publish, so I can’t really judge, but as someone with an acute (if not expert) interest in, among other things, evolutionary biology and medicine, this type of claim seems very familiar. Big Pharma is stopping medical journals from publishing papers that attest to the value of <insert “alternative” modality here>; the gigantic atheist conspiracy is stopping biology journals from publishing papers that show that evolution is a hoax, et cetera. And of course, nobody from those journals is ever saying anyhting.
You also seem to allude to it being obvious to those with no training… But that’s equally unimpressive, as what actually happens can very often be different from what is seen. For example, the squibs - sure, one would expect jets of air if the floors were being blown out by explosives, but you would also expect it if the floors were compressed on top of each other, pushing air out (plus, if it was an explosion, you would expect the squib to start strong and then weaken, not start weak, get larger, and then stop). And those with no experience in engineering might be taken in by the claim made by someone (I forgot the name and I’m not sure if he’s associated with you guys) that large steel-frame buildings simply cannot fall like that without a controlled demolition, but the actual available scientific research which did get published points in the other direction.
Can you show me some of the papers that were rejected? I mean, I’m not the greatest expert in engineering, but I have some basic scientific training as well as a few college courses in physics under my belt, but if I can’t find anything wrong with them, I can try to pull some strings at my college’s engineering department.
Thanks,
-<Me>
Your March 15 Email delves into several distinct topics. I’ll try to treat them all…
You allude to the fields of biology, medicine, spirituality. This is beyond our mission and we will decline to comment on that.
The allegation of a conspiracy by “a vast number of engineering and architectural journals” cannot be rejected. However, we do not have the competence to analyze it, and its existence or non-existence is not directly relevant to our work anyway. What is relevant is that leading scientific and technical institutions, which scientific and technical publications are only one part of, should have but have not denounced the twin towers’ self-evident controlled demolition. The root cause of this empirical observation has no bearing on the scientifically established truth of the twin towers’ controlled demolition.
Of course the controlled demolition of the twin towers is obvious even to people with no formal engineering background, thanks to Its widely broadcasted video record. If the mass media had properly reported on it instead of persistently attributing it to the impact of airplanes hijacked by Osama bin Laden’s fanatics, it would be common knowledge.
You mention the “squibs,” the premature and isolated explosions. This phenomenon is usually a poor means to introduce people to the twin towers’ controlled demolition. If you wish to emphasize it in your outreach, make sure to get people to understand other macroscopic attributes of the twin towers’ destruction beforehand: the uniformity and symmetry of the descending destruction wave, the absence of visible destruction of the facades ahead of the destruction wave, and the speed of the destruction wave.
You allude to “the claim made by someone […] that large steel-frame buildings simply cannot fall like that without a controlled demolition.” Regarding the twin towers, this claim is evidently much closer to the reality than their mythical destruction by airplanes and fires. Your following statement that “the actual available scientific research which did get published points in the other direction” is, as I have explained, an important empirical observation, but it does not disprove the reality of the twin towers’ controlled demolition. It is just one element that contributes to the finding that the scientific and technical community is missing in action on this particular subject. Fortunately, the principal such piece of “research,” the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s latest report, can be quickly exposed as a transparent cover-up by lay people with minimal technical guidance.
You mention the possibility of “[trying] to pull some strings at [your] college’s engineering department.” Good idea! But inviting them to work on a topic that the academic engineering community at large has shunned looks is a good way to be labeled a conspiracy theorist. Consider instead starting with something more compelling. For instance, show them videos of Building 7’s destruction. Or play the devil’s advocate and ask them if the conspiracy theorists are correct when they claim that the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s latest report on the twin towers’ destruction does not provide a technically credible explanation for most of the major attributes of its video record.
Finally, we have not built a list of rejected technical papers on this subject, nor have we looked for them, nor do we have plans to do so. It would not significantly boost 9/11 activism anyway, as people who won’t reflect on Building 7’s video record are unlikely to be willing to learn about 9/11 by studying this much more arcane subject. It could be an interesting project, but it is not essential.
Dan
[/spoiler]
It went on for another few emails; basically, the gist of it is that out of the 2000-odd signatures on that website, not a single one managed to publish anything of remote value. Not. A. One. And the people at AE911Truth attribute this to a massive conspiracy by all major engineering and architecture journals to hide the truth. I don’t want to sound like a prick, but that is the most asinine thing I have ever heard, and it is the hallmark of the rankest pseudoscientist to claim without good evidence that the peer-review process for an entire field is corrupt to that degree. The closest 9/11 truthers ever got to decent peer-reviewed paper was that crap about nanothermite, which was just downright embarrassing.
But of course, I was probably spending more time on that than I needed to, because this guy at the James Randi forums went through the entire list to determine how many were relevantly qualified to opine on the subject.
http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=9886330&postcount=16
This was a while back, but there’s no reason to believe the composition changed significantly in the meanwhile:
AE911Truth bears most immediate comparison to the Discovery Institute - a group of pseudoscientific hacks with no relevant degrees driven not by a genuine interest in the truth but rather in furthering their “Truth” which they know to be true no matter what evidence comes along to debunk it. Their tactics are similar, their appearance is similar, and they really couldn’t be too much more like each other. It’s sad.
Except we have proof positive that such a project does exist, as well as documentation provided by a certain whistleblower. Not to mention the history of other projects, such as MKULTRA and Iran/Contra, which makes that sort of thing much easier to accept at face value.
What we DON’T have is any proof that these secret, shadowy organizations have ever engaged in the mass slaughter of American citizens with no specific political agenda, or the destruction of infrastructure worth billions of dollars. That’s something these CT’ers have never been able to provide – the motive. (Or at least, any motive that makes logical sense.) It all boils down to Occam’s Razor; what’s more likely?
Frankly, I think the base truth is that CT’ers can’t accept reality, period. So they make up some phony reality and pretend that’s what’s real, because deep inside their unconscious minds, they know it didn’t really happen that way. It’s not so far off from families who refuse to accept that their spouse or their child is a rapist or a drug addict – sad to say, but denying reality and inventing bullshit excuses are major facets of human nature. And frankly, I don’t expect that will ever change. 